Ecuador Goes Back on Promise to Keep Yasuni Pristine

So much for the plan not to drill in what’s considered one of the great biological hotspots left on the planet.

Last week, Ecuador’s President, Rafael Correa, took back his agreement not to disturb Yasuní National Park, a 4,000-square-mile spot in the eastern part of the country, after the international community failed to raise the $3.6 billion Correa requested for the park’s protection. The fund brought in about $13 million, according to The New York Times.

“The world has failed us,” Correa said during a news conference. “It was not charity that we sought from the international community, but co-responsibility in the face of climate change.”

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Drilling in this part of the Amazon means impact on a vast array of flora and fauna. “The park has nearly a fifth of the world’s bird species, 10 percent of its amphibians and more tree species in three acres than in the United States and Canada combined,” wrote Audubon magazine.

Even if drilling happens in just 1 percent of the park as Correa has stated, that’s still more than 75 square miles. “The 1-percent figure across the entire Yasuní Biosphere Reserve would amount to 20,000 hectares,” ecologist Kelly Swing, founder of the Tiputini Biodiversity Station, told ScienceInsider. “With over 100,000 species living in each hectare, we’re talking about a huge number of species and individuals.”

But Yasuní also holds oil, and lots of it: 846 million barrels in three fields, to be precise. They’re called Yasuní-ITT, for Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini, and they make up 20 percent of the country’s reserves, according to Ecuador’s site dedicated to the park.

The news rallied anti-drilling groups in the country. Recent polls also show that the majority of Ecuadorians don’t want the rainforest drilled. And ScienceInsider reports that opponents say this isn’t the end of the debate.

“It could have been used as a model for other sensitive areas,” Matt Finer, a Center for International Environmental Law scientist told The New York Times. “But now that it has failed, there is really no alternative model that is attractive to governments unable or unwilling to forgo drilling solely on ecological grounds.”